ESA launches drone app to crowdsource flight data

Help build autonomous spaceships of the future with your own quadcopters.

The European Space Agency (ESA) is turning to the power of the crowd to improve robotic rendezvous methods, launching an app that will help fuel the construction of autonomous spacecraft that can maneuver, dock, and land themselves.

Owners of the Parrot AR.Drone, a midget drone that flies on four rotors, can help ESA with a new crowdsourcing project by downloading the AstroDrone app. The app gamifies the quadcopter's flight as pilots attempt to dock at a simulated International Space Station, and it will monitor the way in which human pilots intuitively assess and correct their position in relation to surrounding obstacles. The ESA hopes that the piloting challenge will provide them with "millions of hours" of data that they otherwise wouldn't be able to collect. The resulting dataset will form the first step to reproducing the flight process with artificial intelligence, teaching robotics to better understand distances and maneuvering skills.

"For ESA, this development opens up completely new ways of involving the public in scientific experiments," said Leopold Summerer, head of the ESA's Advanced Concepts Team. "We can obtain real-life data to train our algorithms in large amounts that would practically be impossible to get in any other way."

Players are rewarded for docking at a simulated ISS in a rapid, controlled manner, with extra points available for correct orientation and low speed on final approach. Versions for other devices are in the works, as well as new levels that will mimic the ESA's Rosetta probe rendezvousing with the 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko comet, a mission due to take place in 2014.

With around half a million of the Parrot AR.Drone sold since its launch in 2010, the iOS controlled drone was seen as the best choice for the ESA to obtain as much data as possible. Parrot has also made the drone's source code open to anyone looking to develop its software.

Team research fellow Guido de Croon explains on the ESA's site that no information about where the drones are flown or any of the pilot's information will be collected. "We will not receive any raw video images or GPS measurements, only the abstract mathematical image features that the drone itself perceives for navigation, along with velocity readings."

The AstroDrone app joins a growing list of interesting hacks of the popular quadcopter, which include a Siri-controlled flight system, the addition of remote-controlled missile launchers, and various range extenders, which replace the AR.Drone's Wi-Fi control with 3G-radio and RC controls. To help with the impossibly cool task of building autonomous spaceships of the future, simply fire up your rotors.